Past Lives: Cool Buildings Converted into Restaurants

If you want to open a restaurant, you have to find a spot for it. These restaurants laid down roots in pre-existing buildings  from churches to haunted houses  that already had their own characters and histories. Check out some of the awesome places that took on new lives when they were converted into restaurants.

Church Brew Works

Location: Pittsburgh, PAIn a Past Life: Church

In 1902, the cornerstone of St. John the Baptist Church was laid on Liberty Avenue. Today, patrons flock to the building not for worship, but for burgers, pizza, pierogies, and beer. The Church Brew Works, which opened in 1996, looks like a church on the outside and still contains reminders of the building's past life. Original pews serve as restaurant seating, eight original lanterns still hang, and the altar area remains intact, albeit with some very different objects occupying the once sacred space: steel and copper beer brewing tanks. The popular Pittsburgh restaurant brews roughly 1,800 barrels of beer every year, including some that sit in oak casks for one to three years.